


and everything fell apart

by c0smic_cl0uds



Series: Convergence [2]
Category: Naruto, RWBY, Undertale (Video Game), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Gen, Multiverse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2019-09-01 14:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16766830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0smic_cl0uds/pseuds/c0smic_cl0uds
Summary: Two girls and a skeleton walked into a cave. Sounds like a joke, right?"This whole situation is a joke", Sakura muttered.And in typical fashion, things only went downhill from there.





	1. beginning of the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It will all work out in the end," she thought sleepily.
> 
> Unfortunately for Haruno Sakura, things never seemed to go according to plan.

The rocks beneath the treads of her sandals sizzled with heat in the midday sun, but Haruno Sakura continued to walk, searching for some clue that might tell her where the hell she was and how to get out.

Green eyes shifted up to the sky and narrowed to slits, her hand reaching up to brush sweaty pink strands away from her forehead. Her skin stung from the heat, her shoulders raw and peeling from days spent meandering around beneath the hot sun. It had been about two weeks now, two weeks since she had woken up on the sun-baked rocks with no idea what had happened, how she had gotten here. Two weeks she had spent hiding out in a cave with two strangers just as lost as she was, living off of small rodents, the water of a dusty creek, and small, dry plants that sprouted between cracks in the craggy rock walls.

_Prison walls_ , she thought bitterly.

For all her exploring, virtually no progress had been made on escaping from this hellhole. Climbing up to the top of one of the enormous rock spires had revealed that the canyons stretched onward for miles on end, the only visible land beyond that consisting entirely of barren desert for as far as the eye could see. It would take days just to get out of the canyons, and who knows how long to cross the vast expanse of desert. With the only source of water she had found being the creek near her cave - which, running perpendicular to the desert, was exactly opposite the direction she needed to travel - the journey was a huge risk without the proper supplies.

Turning away from the relentless, glaring heat, she swept her tongue over her cracked lips and exhaled softly, accepting defeat. The sun was slowly growing lower in the sky - if she wanted to make it back by sundown, she would have to go now. Sundown was when the canyons turned bitter cold, and you could hear the sound of wolves howling in the distance. Even with all her ninja training, Sakura didn’t fancy being caught out here in such circumstances, especially since finding her way back in the dark would be much more difficult than in the daytime. She filled her lungs with a long, deep breath, lungs rattling with the dust that choked the air around her as she inhaled, exhaled. Feet aching, she started forward, catching herself as she stumbled, and began the journey back.

\--

By the time Sakura finally began the short climb up to the cave, the sun had made its way halfway below the horizon, painting the sky dusky orange and purple and bathing the stones around her in soft golden light. She was so exhausted that she nearly went tumbling down the hill more than a few times, barely able to muster the chakra to clamber her way up to the cave, hissing a few colorful choice words under her breath as she finally stumbled inside.

Despite the considerable racket she had made on her journey up the cliff face, her two companions on this spontaneous and horrible adventure of hers hadn’t so much as stirred by the time she made her way through the cave entrance. Nora, for her part, sprung up energetically when she heard Sakura padding over to her supply pack, blue eyes lighting up with excitement. Considering Nora had been out looking for food all day - judging by the dirt all over her, she’d been quite hard at work, though the lack of anything to eat in the cave spoke of little success - it was really no wonder she was taking a nap. Sans, however, had no such excuse, and Sakura was fairly sure he had done a whole lot of nothing all day. He had no wilderness survival training to speak of, however, so it couldn’t really be helped.

That didn't stop her from being annoyed.

Her thoughts lingered on Sans for a moment, gaze roaming over her strange new associate; he sat up against the wall with his eye sockets closed, perma-grin still in place even while he slept. He really was an oddity. A horror, if she was being honest. A living corpse, a skeleton without flesh. She was long past being unsettled by his... _unusual_ appearance; trapped out here in the middle of nowhere with him and Nora, she’d been forced to get used to it quickly. And yet, she still found herself staring during the quiet moments like these, alone in the cave with him and Nora.

She had so many questions; his very existence perplexed her. But when they’d met, all three of them lost and stranded in the canyons with no idea what to do or where to go, he’d offered up very little information about himself, even when prompted - and the same was true even now.

During their second night in the canyon, when they had just discovered the cave and sat huddled around their small campfire, Sakura had asked why. _Why_ was he a skeleton? _How_ was it possible? What _was_ he, really?

Sans had just shrugged. _Why are you a human?_

Her thoughts were broken by Nora’s shrill voice, piping up in the gloom, face softly illuminated by the dying embers that crackled in the makeshift fire pit at the cave’s center.

“Find anything?” her tone was hopeful, orange hair bouncing as she spoke. Sakura’s mouth twisted into a frown.

“Nothing.” she said tightly. “No other water sources, at least not that I can see. If we try to make it to that desert, there’s a good chance that you and me'll die of thirst before we ever get there - and that’s without considering what we’ll do when we have to cross the desert itself.”

Nora let out a loud, frustrated groan, flopping backwards onto the large slab of rock she was perched on. She had somehow managed to haul the thing up into the cave by herself on the fifth day they were stuck here, and it now served as a sad excuse for a mattress.

“Seriously…” she muttered, her usually cheerful voice replaced by an irritated grumble as she ground the heels of her palms into her eyes. “It’s starting to feel like we’re never gonna get out of here.” Sakura glanced over at her, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Sans was awake, watching her with one eye. She spared him a glance, eyes fixating on the small pinprick of light that shone in the darkness of his socket.

She shuddered, quickly turning back to rifling through her pack. Okay, maybe she still found him _a little_ unsettling.

Sakura’s frown deepened as she went over the contents of her pack for the third time that day. As the days went by, she began obsessively checking it throughout the day, as if hoping new supplies would be there when she looked. Before this whole mess had started, she remembered being on a mission with Sasuke, Naruto, and Kakashi - a small escort job for a diplomat from the Land of Wind, accompanying him and his guards to the border between their two lands, where the duty would be handed off to another four man team from Suna. It was a week's travel, out and back, at best, so her supplies were frugal. She listed them in her head, mouthing the words under her breath, over and over as she had done for the past week and a half until the words were branded into her memory with a hot iron. 

Ninja wire; spare clothes, which she now pulled out of the bag to replace her dirt-caked garments; her med kit, which Tsunade insisted she carry around at all times; one water canteen, still full; about a week's worth of dried rations for one, almost half of which had already been used to supplement their meager food supply; two rolls of bandages; a bottle of perfume that Naruto had given her for her birthday (at the time, she’d cuffed him over the head for the gift, but she’d kept it with her ever since); some other miscellaneous hygiene items and personal effects. Then there were the shuriken and kunai in her thigh holster, half of which were currently in use, along with some of the ninja wire, as hunting traps. All useful in some way, but not what she really needed.

She swore under her breath.

“Unless we can find another source of water along the way to the desert, we’ll be in trouble. But we can’t stay here forever. Eventually, we'll run out of food. ‘Course that’s not much of a problem for Sans, but for those of us with stomachs... ” she trailed off. Grabbing the hem of her dress, she tugged it briskly over her head; at the edge of her vision, Sans turned his head - skull? - the other way as she undressed, muttering something about still needing to eat despite lacking a stomach.

“We’ll just have to brave the journey without, and hope for the best. Once we get out of these canyons, we can decide what direction will most likely take us to food and water. And people. Hopefully.” She gnawed at her lip as she said this, pausing before pulling the spare shirt over her head. It left her midriff exposed, which would be a lot better for traveling in this heat.

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere. What kind of crazies are we going to find just wandering out in the middle of the desert?” Nora whined, the tone grating on Sakura’s nerves. She let out a frustrated huff, her own voice rising in pitch with her exasperation.

“I don’t know. Researchers? Scouts? It doesn’t really matter, we’re pretty much out of options at this point.” She tugged on the shorts and the half-skirt and slipped her feet into her sandals, ignoring Nora’s groan. Kneeling on the stone floor, she pulled at the knot holding her hitai-ite in place. As she pulled off the headband, she flipped her pink hair, shaking out dust and debris, and began combing through it with her fingers, trying not to think about the amount of tangles it held.

“We’ll leave at sunrise. I’ll wake up a little bit before then to check that all our supplies are in order. We'll collect our traps and anything caught in them along the way.” Satisfied that all the tangles were gone, Sakura gave her hair a few last pulls before pulling the forehead protector back around her head. She knotted it deftly, tugging out some strands caught between the folds of fabric. “We have to leave as soon as possible, to try and mitigate the risk of running out of supplies.” she added in response to Nora groaning for the third time.

“Sounds like a plan.” Sans replied easily, leaning back on the rock slab (Sakura wasn’t quite sure when he had moved) and tucking his skeletal hands behind his head. His carelessness rubbed Sakura the wrong way, but she fought down her temper with an irritable growl; somehow, she didn't think she could hit Sans even if she tried. Nora grumbled something unintelligible and turned over on her side; Sakura decided to take it as an agreement, watching Nora bunch up her discarded jacket and shove it under her head like a makeshift pillow. She nodded, satisfied.

“Alright. We leave at dawn.” Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Sakura exhaled slowly, the cave now quiet. A few minutes passed like that, with Sakura sitting on the floor, until the quiet and less quiet snores of Sans and Nora began to echo softly throughout the cave. With a low sigh, Sakura pulled out her legs from under her, shifting until she was lying down, facing the cave entrance, her head resting on her pack. It wasn’t comfortable by any means, the cold night air blowing in her face and making her shiver; but ninja habits die hard, and she needed to be vigilant. With how exhausted she was, though, vigilance began to seem nigh impossible.

Stifling a yawn, her heavy eyelids flickered and fell shut. The soft flickering and crackling of the cinders at her back lulled her into a sleepy haze, the smell of smoke tempting her with thoughts of good food like sausages and vegetable skewers roasting over a fire, of dancing and laughing and _relaxing_ with her friends, if only for a little while. Her breathing evened out and slowed, and in the last few seconds before she fell asleep, Sakura dreamed. She dreamed of the day they would make it out of the canyons, find help, and she would get back home. The day she would see her family, her friends. Her team.

Konoha. 

_It will all work out in the end,_ she thought sleepily.

Unfortunately for Haruno Sakura, things never seemed to go according to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jsyk sakura's spare outfit is the one she wears in Naruto the Movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom because it's SO CUTE and i love it sm


	2. murphy’s law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura reflects on the events that led up to... whatever the hell this is.

As they trekked through the canyons, Sans, Sakura, and Nora, marching west towards the desert under the sun's blistering gaze, there was little for Sakura to do with herself except think. So think she did, and she thought so hard that you could almost hear the gears going around in her head, clicking in time with her footsteps. And yet, no matter what subject she chose from the multitude of possibilities, she always seemed to land back on one particular question. _How did I get here?_

And as if in response to this question, her thoughts again replayed the events of the past couple of weeks, projecting images on the inside of her eyeballs that she had watched and watched again, ten, twenty, thirty times before. She searched for something, any clue, any sign, any trace of home or water or _something_ she might have missed. But there was nothing else to see - just the same old unhelpful memories, playing over and over in her mind.

~

The day the three of them met, after she woke up on her back with a painful crick in her neck, Sakura had found herself wandering aimlessly among the rocks, eyes stinging with tears that threatened to spill over into a flood that she wasn't sure she could stop. She felt as if she might crumble in on herself, calling out her teammates’ names in a voice that trembled and broke. Something had gone wrong, something had gone terribly, horribly wrong, and now she was lost among the looming rock formations of some unknown desert with nothing but the clothes on her back and seven days’ worth of supplies. Her team was nowhere in sight.

It frustrated her. Because for all the times she had told herself she was going to get better, that she was going to train to be braver, smarter, stronger, a valuable member of her team... for all her commitment to becoming a ninja her teammates could respect, left alone in the face of such a daunting situation, she was scared. Terrified. And completely unsure of what to do next. And she _loathed_ herself for it.

Then she heard the footsteps, and just like that it was time to stop lamenting and enter straight into survival mode, with no time for surprise or second thoughts. Sakura's instincts kicked in instantaneously, and she began to analyze.

It was clear that whoever was following her was attempting to be quiet, though they were doing a piss poor job of it. Still, the mere fact that they were trying made her heart stutter in fear. She faltered for half a beat, nearly overcome by her nerves, then briskly composed herself and continued on her way; a neutral mask hid the fear from her face. She couldn’t let them know she had heard them. So she kept going, and kept listening, years of practice helping her pinpoint her opponent’s location within seconds.

_What could they want?_ she had wondered. Whoever it was, their intentions could only be malicious, sneaking around like that. But she, they, were in the middle of fuck-off nowhere. Why would somebody be following her around waiting to strike out _here_? Some sort of nomad? One of a tribe of them, perhaps, defending their territory against an unknowing intruder? Or maybe, the person who was responsible for bringing her here?

Her heart squeezed. She couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ just sit and wait for them to attack her. Both the first and last word in this fight would be hers and hers alone.

Deftly, she flicked open her thigh holster, pulled out a kunai, and flung it in her stalker’s direction. It bounced off the rock with a metallic “CLANG!”, right on target. She could almost hear the surprise in the silence that followed, the air heavy with anticipation.

Her voice shook as she spoke, but she stood her ground. Her hand was already white-knuckled around another kunai; the other lingered by her thigh holster.

“I know you’re there. Come out where I can see you, or I’ll come over there myself.”

  
Another pause, a longer one. It felt almost contemplative, if that was possible. Then he stepped out from behind the rock and raised his skeletal hands in the air, offering her a lazy grin. That was when he spoke his first words to her.

“ _Knife_ to meet you, too.”

\--

They encountered Nora in the canyons about two hours after their initial meeting. A solid minute of Sakura simply staring at Sans, open mouthed (after which he thoroughly snapped her out of her daze with a slightly uneasy “Cat got your tongue?”) had been followed by stilted introductions, a barrage of questions for and about Sans, and a host of cryptic answers from the skeleton that left Sakura feeling more pissed off than anything. Now, they wandered the canyons together, searching for clues to help them pinpoint their whereabouts; both of them had quickly come to the disappointing conclusion that neither one of them had any idea where the hell they were or where they were going.

For the two hours and counting that they had been walking, they had hardly spoken a word to each other. Sans had made a few lame attempts of his own at starting a conversation, but they all fell short, Sakura offering only clipped responses to his questions and reacting to his puns with a glare that could kill. At this point, the tension between them hung so thick, it was almost tangible enough to touch. Or slice.

Sakura was the first one to hear it, pausing in her tracks with a frown marring her features, head tilted as if listening for something just beyond the grasp of her hearing. Sans stopped a few paces afterwards, an inquisitive look in his eyes as he turned to look at her, but he stayed quiet as she held up a finger to shush him, looking at him with eyes that said: _Did you hear that?_

It was a few more seconds before he heard it, too - a distant voice, yelling something, the noise bouncing around and back from rock to rock until it became an unintelligible mess of sound that eventually died out in the dry air. A girl, shouting names, from the sound of it. Sakura stayed completely still for a moment more, and Sans realized from the look on her face that she was discerning the source of the sound. Then, beckoning silently for him to follow, she headed off in the direction of the yelling.

It wasn’t too long before the shouts turned into words that Sakura could pick out from the jumble of echoes - loud cries of “Ren!!!” and “Jaune?!”, punctuated by occasional “Ruby!”s and “Yang?”s and “Weiss!”s. Peeking around a corner, Sakura was met with an interesting sight. An orange haired girl, roaming through the canyons much like them, her blue eyes frantic as she scanned her surroundings. At her side, one pink-gloved hand clutched what appeared to be a large metal grenade launcher, holding it casually as if it were nothing more than a duffel bag. The other hand was cupped around her mouth, amplifying her shouts as she screamed for friends, family, _somebody,,_ who Sakura knew wasn’t going to come.

The girl’s pink skirt and navy leather jacket were wrinkled and spotted with dust stains, her white boots coated in coppery brown particles, but it was the frantic expression on her face that really made her look worse for wear. For that, a part of Sakura felt bad for her - she knew how it must feel, being stranded here alone. She was living the very same reality. However, the much larger, louder part of her was too busy being annoyed by how very _loud_ the girl was. Did she have no sense at all? Anyone in a mile radius could hear her bellowing - what if she’d been discovered by someone a lot less friendly than they were?

Despite her irritation, Sakura decided with some reluctance to introduce herself regardless, before the girl would have a chance to be accosted by a pack of angry wolves.

Stepping cautiously out from behind her rock, looking at the girl’s turned back, Sakura decided to start the interaction simply enough, with a neutral “Hey.”

This proved to be a mistake; at the sound of her voice, the orange haired girl whipped around with a yelp, brandishing the grenade launcher whose chambers had begun to spin wildly. This, of course, made Sakura give a yelp of her own, eyes blown wide as saucers as she jumped backward and waved her hands in front of her, shrieking “Waitwaitwaitwaitwait _don’t shoot_!!!!” in a very un-ninja like display of alarm.

And of course through the whole ordeal, Sans, like the gentleman that he was, stood with his head poking out from behind the rock, merely grinning as he watched Sakura frantically try to talk the girl out of blowing her into small, genin-shaped pieces.

~

It had been, Sakura reflected, probably the most disastrous first meeting that she had ever experienced in her entire life. It also, she suspected, would not be the last. Which indeed, it wouldn't be, but she unfortunately didn't find this out until two days into their journey, and so had no way to prepare for the unfortunate incidents that occurred as the sun climbed its way up to noon in the sky. Though then again, even if she did have an inkling of what was going to happen within the span of a mere few minutes, she probably wouldn't have had the energy to do much about it; at this point she was so excruciatingly thirsty and overheated that it was difficult to think about much of anything aside from the thumps of her own feet against the parched earth.

Unsurprisingly, it was Sans who heard the voice - or rather, voices - first this time, and Sakura was so focused on the sounds of her own steps that she walked straight into him when he halted, sticking out an arm in a gesture that immediately told them they should stop and keep their mouths shut (not that they had been talking much anyways - even Nora's incessant chattering had died out a while ago). They paused, silent, as they all craned their heads around, straining and listening for whatever the skeleton had heard just seconds before. A few beats of silence passed. Then they heard a voice.

"Okay, I admit it. This is super freaky."

Tingling with anticipation, the trio cautiously crept forward - or at least, Sans and Sakura did. Nora had to be restrained by the back of her jacket to keep her from going off at a dead sprint towards the sound of the voice; even then, she nearly dragged the two of them along with her. Somehow, they still managed to get all three of them to a good vantage point at the top of a small hill, where they crouched behind a large boulder, peeking around the back of the stone to observe the new (and hopefully friendly) faces.

Their eyes were met with a small, ragtag group of humans, comprised of three teenagers, a guy who was probably in his mid twenties or early thirties, and what looked to be a middle schooler. From what Sakura could tell, the voice from before belonged to the one in the middle of the congregation - a tall and lanky kid with honey-brown skin and a jacket that made Sakura grimace. He must have been roasting in the heat.

The shortest of the group, the middle schooler, was dressed more sensibly in shorts, but also wore a bulky green and white long-sleeved shirt, and looking at how all the rest of them were dressed Sakura was honestly beginning to wonder how any of them were even _surviving_. The thing about the kid that really caught her eye, though, was the bulky device strapped to his back - attached to it was what looked to be a small satellite dish with a handle on it, which the kid held in the air with a slightly awed expression behind his round glasses as he stared out over the vast expanse of canyons.

"I'm getting a reading." The speaker, standing on the middle schooler's left, stood at around the same height as the twenty-something and was built like a dark-skinned, doe-eyed pickup truck. He pushed rather rudely past the approximately-12-year-old as he peered down his nose at the flat device he held in his hand, which hooked up to the smaller kid's backpack via a long, black cord. His flat face turned this way and that for a few seconds, squinting off across the maze of peaks and valleys before his eyes widened slightly, as if he had just realized something.

"This way." he said in a hurried sort of tone, before briskly heading off towards the rocks. Shorty with the glasses scrambled after him as he made his way towards the base of the hill, fighting not to be pulled along by the cord. The three other members of the party trailed along behind at a more measured pace.

Suspicion and excitement bubbled in a confusing mix in the pit of Sakura's stomach. They knew this world, this place - that much was clear, from the way they spoke and interacted with the things around them. However, their actions spoke of a purpose, a purpose that apparently had them leading a search. And whatever they were searching for, with an odd little group like that, and with the way they talked and acted... Sakura had her suspicions that whatever it was had to be significant somehow. How and to what degree, she couldn't be certain, but... well, regardless, it would probably be prudent to observe them a bit more before deciding to run to them for help. This in mind, she turned to Nora and Sans with a gesture to back off, motioning to follow the quintet in secret as they made their way to wherever they were headed.

But of course, as Sakura had figured out a long time ago, everything that could go wrong at this point was sure to do so. And in this case, "everything" was a crumbly bit of rock beneath an orange-haired girl's feet.

She could only watch in utter dismay as Nora went tumbling down the hillside, shrieking the whole way down.

She and Sans watched the spectacle unfold before their eyes - one in consternation and the other chortling loudly - Nora rolling her way down the hill and creating a considerable racket along the way, as the five strangers turned to watch her with eyes wide and mouths open. Sakura stood silent for a few seconds before she let out a deep sigh of resignation, pinching the bridge of her nose as she asked herself for the hundredth time how the _hell_ she had gotten here, how on _earth_ she had managed to get herself tangled up in this giant, stupid mess.

She found herself looking back again upon the second day of their travels, when they discovered the cave nestled at the base of a cliffside. As they stared into the shadows at the edge of the cave, she remembered Sans had quipped: “So... two girls and a skeleton walk into a cave.”

Nora had snorted slightly at the jest. “Was that a joke?” Sans shrugged. Evidently, Nora thought it was funny anyways, as she dissolved into giggles seconds later.

“This whole situation is a joke.” Sakura had muttered.

It had been a disaster of a meeting, of a day, of a week and beyond. It was at that point that Sakura had decided that Murphy’s law was absolute, indisputable fact - anything that could go wrong, would. And had.

And, in typical fashion, things only went downhill from there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sakura: and things only went downhill from there  
> sans: just like nora  
> sakura, murderous: am i a joke to you


	3. perseverance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How the hell were they going to talk this one out?

When Nora lifted her head, dazed, from the conveniently soft cushion of sand she had landed on, she found herself face to face with five pairs of very surprised, very confused eyes.

_Oh._

A few awkward seconds passed where she wasn’t really sure what to do with herself. Her hammer, Magnhild, lay beside her in the dust, its metal surface gleaming in the hot sun, and for a second she considered grabbing it. Brandishing it at Sakura hadn’t exactly gone over well, though, and if she was going to win these people’s favor enough to get a ticket out of here, perhaps a different strategy was in order. Besides, she thought, eyeing the pistol holstered at the hip of a muscular twenty-something with black and white hair. She really wasn’t looking for any trouble.

Several more seconds passed, but to Nora they felt like years. A sheepish grin crept across her face, strained by her nerves.

“Haha… hi…” she said shakily. The group blinked at her without offering a reply, and she fought not to shrink under their scrutiny. “Ah… um…” her smile was lopsided. “Nice weather, isn’t it?” She almost thought she heard a snort of laughter from up on the hill behind her, but if she had, it was quickly stifled. Evidently, the group in front of her was too preoccupied with staring to care.

“What… how…” the lanky guy with the brown hair spoke. The apparent middle schooler next to him rolled his - _...her?_ \- eyes, before String Bean was cut off.

“Where did you come from? Did you follow us?” He was a dark haired boy, Ren’s age or older, glaring at her with eyes the color of rain clouds and wearing some sort of cropped red and white jacket that gave Nora a headache. Her eyes traveled up, away from the offending jacket, and settled on his longish black hair, styled into - she blinked - a mullet. A real, actual mullet. She snorted, and maybe it was the nerves, but she was suddenly unable to contain herself and her laughter. The boy blinked right back at her, taken aback. The look on his face somehow only made it funnier. Nora dissolved into giggles.

“S-sorry.” she snickered. “It’s just…” she glanced up at his face again. He looked… almost affronted, now. She cackled breathlessly, gesturing vaguely at his hair in lieu of an explanation. His eyes widened slightly, like he had suddenly realized what she was laughing about, his mouth opening and closing once, twice. Like a fish out of water. The brunette next to him, meanwhile, had such a smug look on his face that it sent Nora into another fit of giggles. This, however, was quickly put to an end when she heard a pair of feet land lightly in the dust next to her.

Nora winced, making a valiant attempt at stifling another snort as she glanced up to her left. Sakura stood over her with her hands on her hips, a truly impressive scowl on her face. Sans trailed after her a few paces behind, flushed slightly blue with suppressed laughter. _How the hell did that work, anyway?_ It was hard to think too much about Sans with Sakura glaring at her like that, though. She could practically feel her green eyes burning holes in her forehead. Suddenly afraid for her life, Nora attempted a grin.

“Aah..aa… my uh… my foot slipped…”

A tense silence followed, and for a few seconds Nora was sure that Sakura was going to murder her, snap her neck and dump her body out in the desert for the vultures. But then, suddenly, Sakura’s eyes flicked upwards to stare at the five strangers in front of them ( _The Unfamiliar Five_ , she decided, _until further notice_ ). The redhead followed her gaze, and then she grimaced. _Right._

All five pairs eyes were locked on Sans as he approached down the hill (at a fairly leisurely pace, of course), taking in his strange appearance with expressions of shock, apprehension, even fear. The skeleton seemed mostly unfazed by the attention, though if Nora had been a bit more perceptive she would have seen the way his eyelights flickered, refused to meet his observers’ stares. She quickly stumbled to her feet and brushed dust and gravel from her knees, picking Magnhild up as she went.

 _How are we gonna talk_ this _one out?_

The twenty something with the weird black-and-white undercut leaned over and whispered something in Mullet Man’s ear. The dark haired boy twitched, nodding almost imperceptibly. Both of their gazes were still trained on Sans, who was starting to look like he’d rather be anywhere but here; blue tinted sweat beaded up in trace amounts on the surface of his skull, and Nora was extremely not sure how the hell that was supposed to work, either.

The dark-haired boy’s hand shifted towards his hip, where Nora noticed that he, too, had a blaster pistol holstered. She narrowed her eyes, flexing her fingers around Magnhild and giving him a “don’t you dare” look, but he wasn’t looking at her.

Next to Mullet Man, String Bean raised one trembling finger and pointed it at Sans.

“Uh… I’m not hallucinating, right? That’s… that’s a skeleton? A… a skeleton that can walk? Blush? Blink?” he paused. “...sweat?”

Sakura’s already-prominent frown deepened, if that was even possible. She opened her mouth to speak on Sans’ behalf, but he beat her to the punch.

“Yup, that’d be me.” He raised his hand and wiggled his phalanges in a lazy sort of wave - Mullet’s hand twitched by his blaster at the motion, but if Sans noticed this, he didn’t show it. “I’m Sans. Sans the Skeleton.” After a beat, he added: “In the flesh.”

Nora let out another nervous snort of laughter, but quickly clapped a hand over her mouth at the poisonous look Sakura shot her, and then Sans. Skinny Guy gave a short, uncomfortable chuckle, but it did nothing to ease the mounting tension.  
“Right… so…ah... “ The feeble attempt at conversation quickly trailed off into nothing. Another uneasy silence, and gods was she getting _damn_ tired of this already.

A frustrated grumble resonated in Nora’s chest. She was about to open her mouth to speak, but was promptly interrupted by the guy with the undercut, who she decided from here on out she was going to refer to as Anime Hair.She huffed in annoyance, planting the hand that wasn’t white-knuckled around Magnhild on her hip.

“Well, as uh, Keith was saying- ” It took Nora a couple of second to realize that the “Keith” Anime Hair was referring to was the guy with the mullet “-I’d like to know too... what _are_ youguys doing out here? I don’t get the feeling the Garrison sent you, considering at least two of you guys are…” he trailed off before he could almost definitely say “just kids”; the sentiment wasn’t lost on Sakura, who now looked very much annoyed. The guy cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, regardless… why are you here?”

While Sakura and Sans exchanged a glance, Nora kept her eye on this so-called “Keith”, who was looking more and more trigger-happy the longer this conversation went on. Which, she guessed she could see why, but it still kind of pissed her off. She put on the most intimidating glare she could muster. It didn’t seem to have much of an effect.

“We’re… not really sure.” Sakura admitted after a pause, apparently stamping down her anger since her tone remained measured. “Truth be told, we haven’t even got a clue _where_ we are. We just… ended up here, somehow.” 

Anime Hair looked at her with a frown, as if he didn’t quite believe her. Sakura scowled, clearly knowing full well what he was thinking, impatience bleeding into her tone.

“Don't look at me like that, there’s not much else I can tell you other than that - it’s the truth. We just… woke up here, in these stupid canyons.” Her hands gestured a little wildly, her tone slipping into a slightly hysterical growl. “Just- for gods’ sake, we’ve been trying to get out of here for the past two weeks!” she snapped.

“ _Two weeks_?” Mr Bad Hair repeated, eyebrows escaping into his hairline.

Keith narrowed his eyes. “ _You three_ survived out here, in the middle of the desert, for two weeks, and with just that little pack full of supplies?” he asked, his voice revealing the barest hint of derision. “...You _do_ realize you’re kind of in no position to lie right now, right?"

And... okay, Nora thought, that pissed her off - and not just because of his denial of what she knew to be true, but especially for his dismissal of the fact that for them, the last two weeks had sucked complete ass. Which they had. Majorly.

Despite the anger simmering in her stomach, however, it was Sakura’s patience that snapped first; her eyes narrowed, smoldering, and Nora heard her let out a soft ‘Cha!’ under her breath. Not for the first time, Nora reflected that this all was probably a lot for a kid like Sakura to handle. 

“ _Excuse me?_ You-” Sakura took a step forward. Nora could see her hands balling into fists, could _hear her knuckles pop_ with the force, and for a few glorious seconds, she was entirely convinced (and maybe a little excited) that Sakura was about to knock this guy's teeth out. Keith, apparently likewise convicted, put his hands up into a defensive position, haltingly, obviously hesitant at the prospect of punching a thirteen-year-old, but-

A soft ‘ping!’ rang out, and Sakura abruptly halted in her tracks. A heart-shaped mass of light hovered inches from her chest, shivering slightly and glowing a soft, deep blue. 

“Dude. Chill." 

Nora and the others slowly turned their heads to look at Sans. The skeleton stood with the usual relaxed posture, but with one hand extended lazily towards Sakura, which was probably the biggest movement Nora had ever seen him make, if she was being honest. Blue energy flickered around his fingertips as he held her in place, and _holy shit_ , Nora thought, _since goddamn_ when _can he do that_? Apparently the people in front of them were having similar thoughts - Anime Hair’s eyebrows were ascending into the stratosphere, Big Guy was now wildly brandishing the squeaky box in his hand as if it were a weapon, and Nora and Skinny Guy stared with comically open mouths, while Keith's pistol had now escaped its holster and was pointed uncertainly somewhere between Nora and the ground. The middle schooler, meanwhile, merely looked mildly impressed; Sakura was looking confused, and a little miffed; and Sans... well, Sans pretty much looked the same as he always. 

A few beats passed before Sans released Sakura with another ‘ping!’. The blue light faded and Sakura stumbled forward. The heart-shaped object in front of her moved as well; outside of Sans’ influence, it was now a soft purple color that pulsed with a rhythm much like a heartbeat. Before the girl could brush her fingers over its glowing surface, however, the heart flickered out of sight.

Nobody spoke, and nobody moved. Those with weapons now held them at the ready, but no one really seemed exactly sure what they should do with them. Sans, now visibly uncomfortable, cleared his throat, and breathed in as if to crack a joke, before giving up with a sigh.

“Look,” he began - Skinny Tall Guy jerked as he spoke - “We’re _not_ looking for a fight.”

He cast a pointed look at Sakura; she scowled, muttering something under her breath, but didn't challenge him. 

“All we want is to get somewhere with food, water, fresh clothes, maybe a bed to sleep in." the skeleton continued. "You guys are the first people we’ve managed to find out here, and since we’re kind of out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere..." It took all of Nora's willpower not to snort at that. "...we probably aren’t gonna have such good luck again.” He paused briefly. “Just... lead us to the nearest, uh... town, city, whatever. After that, we’ll be out of your hair.”

Big Guy immediately began to protest, but Anime Hair stopped him with a raised of his hand. The tall man stared at Sans tersely, his mouth frozen into a grim line and his eyebrows drawn together with uncertainty. Then, his grey eyes flickered over Nora, and then Sakura, and something akin to pity flickered in their depths, his jaw working as he thought.

The man glanced at Keith. There was a distinct pause in which some sort of unspoken message apparently passed between them. Then, the boy’s eyes widened. 

“Shiro, we can’t-” he hissed, turning away from the three and motioning hurriedly to his companions. The group of five quickly drew into a small circle, leaving, Nora, Sans, and Sakura standing alone, watching and waiting.

As she had more times in the past couple of weeks than she had before in her entire life, Nora groaned in frustration. She was starting to get really sick of waiting.

\--

“Shiro, we can’t-” Keith hissed under his breath, motioning quickly with his hands to direct the others into a tight huddle, ignoring the orange-haired girl’s groan. He could feel the three sets of eyes on him from his right, green and blue and little white pinpricks burning holes in the side of his head. He shook himself slightly, stubbornly, unwilling to admit to being unsettled. “We can’t take them back, we don’t have time.”

“That one with the pink hair, she’s just a little kid!” Lance protested. “And the other one is probably about our age, and that skeleton guy is… who knows how old, and has _telekinesis_ , apparently. We can’t just _leave_ them out here. A couple more days and the two that aren't literally _undead_ will dry out like raisins!"

“If they’re to be believed, then they’ve already survived out here for over two weeks.” Keith muttered. “If they keep going the way they have been, they should be able to reach the Garrison. Eventually.”

"Eventually!" Lance hissed, already preparing to start bickering with him for the third time that day.

“We could always just drive them back to the safehouse, give them enough supplies to get them to the Garrison, and send them on their way.” Pidge piped up, pushing his glasses up his nose while the satellite dish at his side let out quiet, indistinct squealing noises. “We can’t exactly go back to the Garrison ourselves right now, anyway.”

“We can’t do that either.” Shiro said, his voice heavy with an urgency that made the others tense. “It’ll take too long. We've already wasted enough time as it is. If we dilly-dally any more, we'll be putting the whole planet at risk.”

“Plus, we probably shouldn’t divulge the location of our, uh, _secret safehouse_ to any _more_ random strangers.” Keith added bitingly, shooting Lance, Pidge, and Hunk a look. Lance scowled, but didn’t object, and a heavy silence descended upon the group. 

In the end, it was Hunk who spoke up. 

“What if we take them with us?” he said, the words coming slowly, as if he was still working out the details even as he spoke them aloud. “We bring them along with us until we find this _Voltron_ \- whatever that may be - then we all get somewhere safe. We can figure out what to do from there.”

Pidge blinked at him, a frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows. “Can we really just… do that? We don’t even really know what we’re looking for, and based on what’s going on, this could be - no, definitely _is_ \- _really_ dangerous. That’s-” he pointed back at the trio “-a thirteen year old, a random teenager who fell down a hill, and a magic goddamn skeleton, who have been wandering out in the desert for two weeks with no idea how they got here. Supposedly. Something tells me we really shouldn’t get involved with them, let alone _them_ with _us_.”

“We don’t really have any other choice.” Shiro said, defeated, combing a swath of whitened hair out of his eyes with his fingers. “We have to find Voltron, whatever it is, before _they_ do. If we don’t, we’re all doomed.” They fell silent at that. Shiro, as always, was right - they needed to get their priorities in order. 

Squaring his shoulders, the dark-haired man turned to face the three strangers. As he did, he looked the pink-haired girl straight in her emerald eyes - despite her small stature, she was clearly the one in charge here. Which was admittedly a little weird, but they were well past worrying about that. 

“Okay, look. We can’t afford to take you guys back to where we came from right now. It’s not safe, not for you or for us. _But,_ ” he continued pointedly, as the redhead opened her mouth to protest. “...We can take you with us until we find what we’re looking for. After that, we’ll try and drop you off somewhere safe, as soon as we can. But after that, you’re on your own. Deal?”

The pink-haired girl narrowed her eyes again, but there was no heat in her gaze this time - only suspicion, and surprisingly shrewd calculation. After a brief pause, she asked: “And what _are_ you looking for, exactly?”

Shiro and Keith exchanged another glance; Pidge, on the other hand, wasn't interested in being coy.

“Truth be told, we don’t really know.” he said bluntly. “We know its name is Voltron. We know it’s something important, a weapon or something, that a group of very bad… space... people… are after. And we know that if they get their hands on it, it’ll mean very bad things for Earth as a whole.” He pushed his glasses up again from where they had inched their way down the sweaty slope of his nose. “Right now we’re able to track it by the signals it’s giving off,” he gestured with the satellite in his hand, which gave a high-pitched squeal, “and we can tell that it’s somewhere close by, in these canyons.” He paused, thinking. "And...yeah, that's about it, really."

The girl raised an eyebrow, her lips twitching inscrutably. A few seconds passed, and then she sighed in resignation. “So what you’re saying is, to find this Voltorb thing-”

“Voltron.” Pidge corrected.

“Right. So you’re saying we’ve gotta go _back into_ the canyons - these godforsaken canyons we’ve been stuck wandering around in for the past two weeks - before we can get out of here for good, ‘s that it?”

Pidge frowned. “It’s not like you have much of a choice here-” he began, but the pink-haired girl cut him off, waving her hands.

“I know, I know. I’m just…” she pursed her lips, hands lowering. “I’m just... _really_ tired of this place.”

She slumped slightly where she stood, hugging her arms to herself, and for a brief moment she took on the distinct look of a vulnerable child, lost and scared and watery-eyed. But after only a few seconds, the moment was over. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and glanced at the redhead, then at the skeleton - Sans - and then at Shiro, staring him straight in the eye.

“Fine. We’ll go with you. And once you’ve found your… Voltron… well, we’ll leave you to deal with that whole mess yourself.” Behind her, the girl with the orange hair gave an enthusiastic nod and a grin. Sans shrugged.

Then, the pink-haired girl took a step forward, and then another, and walked straight forward until she stood just a few paces in front of Shiro. He blinked at her. Without breaking eye contact, she extended her hand to him, slowly, and introduced herself.

“I’m Sakura Haruno. The girl with the red hair is Nora, and he’s Sans.” Behind her, Nora gave a cheerful wave. Sakura paused briefly, as if in consideration, then said quietly “For both our sakes, I hope this works out.”

Silence. Then, slowly, Shiro’s mouth spread into a tentative grin. He reached down, took her small hand in his large one, and shook it. “Good to meet you, Sakura.” he glanced up. “Nora.” He then looked back at Sakura, who still stared at him, unblinking, and replied: “I hope so too.”

He never said, nor did any of the others, that it was good to meet Sans. But if the skeleton had noticed, not a word was said to indicate that he even cared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 6/18/19: modified for ooc stuff


	4. blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge hissed at Lance. "Be careful, man! This isn't a simulator!" Lance responded with a wobbly grin.
> 
> "Well that's good, I always wreck the simulator." 
> 
> Behind the pilot’s chair, Nora wailed. "We're doomed!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I PROOFREAD THIS  
> DO  
> YOU  
> KNOW

A half hour’s walk through the desert later, and Nora was still no closer to knowing what the they were looking for than she’d been when they’d started.

The sun still beat mercilessly down upon the group, forcing Nora to keep her jacket tied around her waist (and thank gods for the sleeveless top and short skirt, or she’d probably be dead of heatstroke by now), though the air had cooled some as the sun crawled from noon-high down to a lower position in the sky. The warm light cast long shadows across the stone floor of the canyon, creating ominous dark figures at the edges of Nora’s vision and making it feel like evening, even though it couldn’t have been later than two in the afternoon.

The first part of their expedition had been filled with chatter - mainly Nora asking questions about the five newbies, what they were looking for, anything she could think of to keep her mind off of things. Sakura even chimed in occasionally to ask for more details or to respond to something Nora said, usually accompanied by an eyeroll.

Thus far, Nora had amassed a sizeable amount of basic information about their new companions. Names, of course; Mullet Man, of course, was Keith, Anime Hair’s name was Shiro, Beanpole was Lance, the middle schooler was Pidge (and was, as it turned out, not a middle schooler at all), and the guy built like an armored car was Hunk. Some interesting monikers there, but Nora wasn’t one to judge.

Shiro, she had discovered, had a hella sweet robot arm to go with his weird anime hair - so sweet, in fact, that she hadn’t realized it was a prosthetic at first. (“Just like Yang’s!” she exclaimed when it finally dawned on her. Shiro had just blinked at her, because of course he had no idea who Yang was). She had also picked up, during the period of awkward introductions, that Pidge liked peanut butter ( but not peanuts(, that Lance was afraid of spiders, and that Hunk’s default reaction to stress was to puke, and other such tidbits. Including that Keith was a bit of a tool. But really, she knew that already.

So that was all well and good. Except - oh yeah - nothing she had learned told her anything about what they were doing, where they were going, or how long it would take. Which was just a teeny bit frustrating. 

(Very. It was very frustrating.) 

By now, Nora had given up on asking questions. Everyone else had stopped trying as well, and now the the squealing of Pidge’s satellite was the only sound accompanying the dragging of their feet. Nora kept having to readjust her grip on Magnhild, her sweaty palms sliding against the metal, which had grown hot enough to sting her palms through her gloves. Sakura was in worse spirits than she’d been before, if that was possible, and her sweat-damp pink hair was now tied up into a short ponytail with her headband. Even Sans was starting to look a little bit warm - bluish sweat drops trickled down the surface of his skull, and he had taken off his jacket and draped it over his head as a sort of makeshift shield from the unrelenting sun. The Five, on the other hand, seemed pretty much unaffected, much to her annoyance. Pidge and Hunk were seemingly too focused on their respective tasks to give a damn about the weather; Keith and Shiro had taken to talking to each other in low voices, showing no reaction to the sweltering heat; and Lance, well… Lance just looked bored.

Then, all at once, they halted in their tracks, and this time it was Nora’s turn to run into Sans, who pitched forward a little and let out an “oof!”. It briefly crossed her mind to apologize, but the tension in the air was a bit too distracting for her to give much thought to manners. 

Hunk’s Geiger counter was going crazy, the device letting out a harsh squeal from between his clenched fingers while Pidge's satellite spun every which way. In front of them was the apparent source of the emissions - an unassuming gap in the rock which marked the entrance to a small cave.

As the group slowly filed in through the cave entrance and Nora’s eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she began to make out shapes and lines etched into the stone. Carvings, probably almost as old as the cave itself, littered the stone walls, gouged out of the rock with painstaking precision. As she walked farther inside the cave, she couldn’t help her jaw dropping slightly in awe, and she quickly approached the rightmost wall to peer closer at one of the carvings.

It was a lion, that much she could tell. Now, admittedly, Nora didn’t have much experience with lions. _Still_ , she thought, and she squinted slightly as her gaze roved over the hard lines of the image. It was certainly nothing like any lion she had ever seen before. Too angular, too… unnaturally _boxy_ , its structure so familiar and yet so completely _alien_ that it sent a light shiver of discomfort up her spine. She hummed, poking at it with her finger.

“What are these?” the same sort of breathy awe that Nora felt laced Shiro’s voice, his gaze sweeping over the walls of the cave with a look of wonder, almost reverence. The other members of the group looked around the cave with similar expressions: Pidge, straightening his glasses as he stared raptly at a cluster of carvings against the opposite wall; Sans, staring up at the cave’s ceiling (also speckled with carvings) with a mixture of confusion and curiosity; Sakura, tracing her fingers carefully over the lines that made up a lion’s tail, green eyes round and shiny in the darkness.

“These are the lion carvings I was telling you about.” Keith explained in the almost eager sort of tone that he seemed to reserve exclusively for Shiro. “They’re everywhere around here.”

“Funny lookin’ lions.” Sans, remarked, brushing his phalanges over one of the images with a soft scrape. “What’s that got to do with the readings on the Geiger counter, though?” Keith just shrugged, apparently just as mystified as the rest of them.

Then, as if on cue, the Geiger counter went completely berserk. At the same time, a loud “Whoa… _Whoa!_ ” came from Lance, who had laid his hand against one of the carvings. All at once, every single carving on the wall lit up bright, electric blue, casting lines of shimmering light across the faces of the cave’s stunned occupants.

Nora yelped. Keith blinked.

“Huh. They’ve never done that before.”

Then, a dreadful rumbling noise broke through their reverie, punctuated by a soft “Uh-oh.” from Sans. There was a shriek from Sakura, echoing around the cavern as she went tumbling headlong down the dark hole that had opened up beneath her feet. Similar yells erupted from the others as they followed suit, the ground suddenly falling away beneath them. Nora scrabbled at the walls for a handhold, but the carvings were the only purchase available, and much too small to hook her fingers into. She saw a flash of white-blue out of the corner of her eye before she, too, went hurtling down into the unknown darkness below. 

Because of course, today just couldn’t get any worse.

\--

When Sakura came to her senses, the first thing that registered was the sound of water - streaming and trickling and drip, drip, dripping, the sound echoing ominously in the space around her.

The second thing that registered was the fact that her knees and hands were scraped to hell and back, which on top of everything else was just so damn _shitty_ that it made her swear under her breath in frustration. She cradled her left hand, which had sustained the most damage, and breathed in and out through her nose, vaguely aware of the warm trickle of blood over her palm.

The third thing that registered was the brush of a bony hand over her shoulder, which made her jump in surprise. When she looked up, though, it was only Sans, who stood next to her with an odd expression on his face, a mixture of concern and something else she couldn't identify.

_Stood? Did he land on his feet?_

Sakura looked up and glanced around, her senses slowly coming back to her. The others lay in a groaning heap nearby. All of their faces were stained electric blue, illuminated by a glow emanating from somewhere in front of her - just like the light that glimmered from the lion carvings just before they had been sent falling down into... whatever this place was. Her brows knitted together and she turned her head with her eyes narrowed, searching the source of the strange blue light.

Her heart skipped a beat and her eyes grew wide, the pain of the light shining directly in her eyes forgotten. "Oh."

Somewhere to her left, Lance breathed out shakily, wonder coloring the edges of his voice. "They _are_ everywhere."

" _Ohhhh._ "

It was a giant dome that, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be made out of light - like a barrier ninjutsu, perhaps, but a lot bigger and weirder looking. And blue. A honeycomb pattern traced across its surface in startling white-blue, tinging everything the color of cobalt. It looked to Sakura like something out of a science fiction comic - which was ridiculous, of course, because science fiction was... well, fictional - but considering the situation she supposed it wasn't really outside the realm of possibility at this point. The really impressive thing, though, was not the force field itself, but the hulking metal figure that loomed behind it.

It was a lion. Looking back on the carvings, perhaps that should have been obvious from the start. Then again, it's not as if they had much else to go off of - the threat of an impending alien invasion, some weird cave-doodles and the word "Voltron" didn't exactly scream "big-ass robot lion", did it? And by the way, _what the hell_ ? Sakura had to reach over and dig her fingernails into her arm, hard, just to make sure that this wasn't some sort of cracked up fever dream caused by poison training gone wrong. All that did, though, was leave red crescent shaped marks in her forearm, and confirm the unfortunate truth of her current reality. 

At this point, she really shouldn't have been surprised.

"...Holy shit." Nora said, which Sakura thought summed up the situation rather succinctly 

"Is this it? Is this the Voltron?" Pidge asked.

"It... must be." Shiro replied.

"This is what's been causing all this crazy energy out here." Keith said breathlessly.

"No doubt about it." Sans said, tone clipped. Sakura shot him a glance - his eyelights had shrunk down to pinpricks, and he stared at the lion with an air of apprehension.

Standing in front of the dome, Keith began to examine it, scrutinizing it without touching as if he half-expected it to vaporize him on the spot. Everybody else was focused on the lion, gazes sweeping over its body with expressions of awe and wonder. At the edge of her hearing, Sakura heard Sans mutter "Never felt magic on _this_ level before before." She had to wonder what that meant, and evidently, Shiro did, too - he cast the skeleton an odd look that might have been suspicious, but didn't articulate further than that.

Lance, staring at the lion's face with a small frown, spoke up. "Does anyone else get the feeling this is staring at them?"

"Hmm..." Shiro hummed, cocking his head. "No."

Lance moved his head from side to side, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. His eyes narrowed. "Yeah. The eyes are totally following me."

Keith, looking just the tiniest bit exasperated, had apparently decided that the force field wasn't going to vaporize him. Walking the last few steps up to it, he paused briefly, then placed his palms flat against the blue surface. The dome didn't react.

"I wonder how we get through this." he muttered, brow furrowing.

"Maybe you just have to knock." Lance replied challengingly, jogging up next to him.

Sakura rolled her eyes as, true to form, he raised his knuckles and knocked, rapping them twice against the dome's surface.

"That's not going to wor-" she began.

The floor beneath them ignited in blue, deep grooves in the stone spilling sapphire light out into the cavern and cutting her off mid-sentence. The force field dissipated to expose the lion in its entirety, looming over them with a presence somehow far more vast than what an inanimate object should have possessed. Sakura looked around her with wide eyes and an open mouth, only to find that Shiro, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and Keith had all gone stock still, eyes wide and fixated on the lion. Sans' hands had come out of his pockets in surprise, his eyelights gone once again, and Nora was brandishing her grenade launcher with a wild look in her eyes.

For a moment, Sakura half expected the lion to move - perhaps to eat them, or crush them beneath a giant steel paw. But when several seconds passed where it didn't do anything, she decided she could consider them safe. For now.

"...Huh." Sans said plainly.

"Woah..." breathed Shiro, Lance, Pidge, and Keith, in unison.

"Uh, did everyone just see that?" Lance asked after a pause, voice noticeably higher than usual.

“The shield going 'poof'?" Nora queried, making a small gesture with her hands to illustrate. Lance gave her a funny look, and shook his head mutely.

"Voltron is a robot! Voltron is a huge, _huge_ , awesome robot!" Hunk exclaimed, practically bouncing up and down.

"And this thing is only one part of it!" Pidge said, a hint of excitement coloring his voice. "I wonder where the rest of them are."

Sakura blinked, nonplussed. _Where'd they draw that conclusion from?_

"This is what they're looking for." Shiro muttered, sounding torn between awe and foreboding. The others didn't seem to share his disquiet, too amazed by whatever they had seen that Sakura and her companions apparently weren't privy to.

"Incredible..." Keith uttered.

"What did you see?!" Nora demanded, with an edge of pleading to her tone. 

She never got an answer, for at that moment, the lion finally moved. . Sakura jumped backwards in surprise as it lowered its massive head with the soft, smooth whirring of metallic joints shifting and turning in unison, opening its mouth to reveal an entrance to the thing's interior.

 _A cockpit ,_ she thought, the realization dawning on her. _It’s an airship._

Pidge and Hunk let out startled yelps and clung to each other, while Shiro and Keith just hung back and eyed the thing warily. Lance, showed no such consideration - after a brief moment of hesitation, he made his way gleefully to the entrance and nearly skipped inside. Curiosity overriding the diminishing feeling of danger, Sakura hurried after him, eyes roving over the lion as she went. Behind her, Sans and the others followed closely.

When she made it inside the lion, Sakura found that Lance had already seated himself in the chair at the head of the cockpit, giving a confident "Here we go." as his eyes scanned the controls. As he spoke, the seat jolted forward, causing him to let out a sharp scream. Sakura snorted, half-exasperated and half-amused, momentarily reminded of a certain idiot blonde. As quickly as it had come, though, she pushed the thought out of her mind - right now was not the time for distractions. 

The command console in front of Lance activated, lighting up with a soft, electronic trill. The tall boy's eyes widened, and he smirked. "Heheh! Alright! Very nice!"

Behind Sakura, Hunk gave a sound of disapproval. "Okay guys, I-I feel the need to point out, just so that we're all, you know, aware: _We are in some kind of futuristic alien cat head right now_."

Lance groaned, then jumped up in his seat halfway through rolling his eyes. 

"Did you guys just hear that?" he asked. Sakura blinked, exchanging glances with the others, but they shook their heads.

"Hear what?" Keith asked.

"I-I think it's talking to me." he said uncertainly. Sakura raised her eyebrows.

"'Talking'?" Sans asked.

"Hmm... um..." Lance hummed, considering the command console in front of him. Reaching out cautiously, he pressed a few buttons. The lion gave a massive lurch, and it was a few moments before Sakura realized it had stood up. Nora cursed behind her as the lion let out a roar. Hunk and Pidge screamed.

“Laaance-” Sans began warningly.

"Ok. Got it. Now let's try this." Lance placed his hands on the controls. Sakura grimaced.

"You better know what you're doi-aaaaAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

Her words gave way to loud cursing as the lion shot forward, barreling its way out of the cave with a mighty crash. Hunk and Pidge screamed again as Lance jerked the controls wildly, the world spinning and flipping uncontrollably around them.

Rather predictably, the momentum sent all of the cockpit's inhabitants slamming against each other, bouncing off the walls like the inside of a pinball machine. Sakura ended up pinned between Hunk and the wall, her battered hands and knees screaming at the harsh collision with the metal, while Nora struggled not to suffocate between Shiro's shoulder blades, to his obvious displeasure. Sans, meanwhile, was stuck cowering between Hunk and Pidge, the former clinging to the latter and looking very green. _If he pukes on me,_ Sakura thought murderously, _I'm going to throw him out of this thing headfirst._

" _YOU. ARE. THE. WORST. PILOT. EVER._ " Keith spat out, poised as if preparing to strangle Lance and take the controls by force (which, honestly, Sakura could sympathize with). Lance only joined in on the screaming.

Out the front windshield, Sakura could see they were soaring up above the canyon and the desert, the word revolving wildly around them as Lance executed all sorts of stomach-dropping flips and tricks that made her head spin along with the cockpit. Said pilot giggled gleefully, and the whole cabin lurched as the lion slammed into the ground (making Sakura's stomach roil unpleasantly, and if she had had anything to eat that day she probably would have puked it up by now) before taking off again at a breakneck speed, because _apparently_ the thing could run, too.

"Isn't this awesome?!" Lance shouted with a manic hint to his voice.

"Hardly!" Sakura snarled; at the same time, Hunk whimpered behind her. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

"I'm not making it do _anything_. It's like it's on autopilot!"

The lion took off again, prompting Nora to scream (which was quickly muffled as she was thrown headfirst into Shiro, again, inches away from castrating him with Magnhild.)

"Where are you going?!" Keith yelled.

"I just said it's on autopilot!" Lance snapped, eyes skimming over the control panel. He paused on what looked like a radar screen. "...It says there's an alien ship approaching Earth. I think we're supposed to stop it."

"It _"says"_?" Sakura hissed, clutching her banged-up hand.

"What did it say, exactly?!" Pidge asked, harried. Lance shook his head.

"Well… it's not like it's saying _words_ , more like feeding _ideas_ into my _brain_. ...Kind of."

" _WHAT DO YOU MEAN, KIND OF?!_ " Sakura bellowed.

Hunk piped up before she could throttle Lance. "Well, if this thing is the weapon they're looking for, why don't we just like- I don't know, give it to them? Maybe then they'll leave us alone." he stammered. After a pause, he added: "Sorry, Lion, nothing personal."

Shiro shook his head urgently. "You don't understand. These monsters spread like a plague throughout the galaxy, destroying everything in their path. There's no bargaining with them. They won't stop until everything's dead."

Everyone turned their eyes on Hunk. He shrunk down, cheeks taking on a slight shade of pink. "... Oh. Never mind then."

At that moment, Sakura realized that the sky outside the window had gone dark. Looking outside, she realized with a growing sense of horror that the Lion had left Earth’s atmosphere entirely, and was now soaring through a dark, star-speckled expanse of fuck-knows-where empty space.

“Shit.” she hissed.

It was then that something appeared in the distance. An airship like theirs, and yet completely different in every possible way - the thing was huge, made of plates and spires of dark purple-grey metal. It definitely looked alien, though she couldn’t say she had much experience in regards to aliens. 

Everyone in the cabin gasped. Shiro blanched. Nora said “Uh-oh.”

" _Holy crow_! Is that really an alien ship?!" Hunk squeaked. Next to him, Shiro had gone stiff as a board, transfixed by the ship with a look of dawning horror on his face.

"They found me." he muttered.

Sakura ground her teeth, quickly pulling a wad of bandages out of her thigh holster and beginning to wind them tightly around her torn-up hand. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of her face. Her fight or flight instincts screamed at her, she had to be ready - but how was she supposed to fight that thing if it was bigger than a goddamn _skyscraper_???

Purple lights ignited all over the surface of the alien ship, and before she knew it, the Lion was off, spinning and twisting and diving to avoid the onslaught of blasts raining down around them, exploding in purple flashes of light. Sakura struggled to tie off the end of the bandages as the ship pitched violently, pushing chakra into her feet to keep herself anchored to the floor.

Pidge hissed at Lance. "Be careful, man! This isn't a simulator!" Lance responded with a wobbly grin.

"Well that's good, I always wreck the simulator."

Behind the pilot’s chair, Nora wailed. "We're _doomed_!"

Sans shrugged. "Welp, it's been fun. Sort of. Not really."

A whirring noise echoed from the front of the Lion, and Sakura leaped nearly into the ceiling as a jet of blue light erupted from the Lion's maw, blasting the length of the warship and leaving fire and blasted shards of metal in its wake. Soon after, Lance jerked the controls forward, and the Lion shot towards the ship - it raked its claws against the side of the vessel, tearing large chunks of metal away and flinging them off into space, dancing away again just before it could be hit by another flurry of purple death beams.

"Nice job, Lance!" Shiro cheered. Lance grinned, glowing at the praise, with a newly determined set to his expression.

"Okay." he declared. "I think it's time to get these guys away from our planet."

The next thirty or so seconds passed in a blur. The Lion shot off into the darkness of unknown space, the alien ship in hot pursuit - chasing, and gaining on them quickly, but for whatever reason, the blasts had stopped. The sky outside the Lion seemed to grow ever darker, and a small, blue planet with smaller, round satellites hovering in its orbit could now be seen in the distance.

"Where are we?" Keith asked.

"Edge of the solar system." Shiro said, pointing with one hand at one of the smaller spheres, which appeared to be covered in ice. "There's Kerberos."

"It takes _months_ for our ships to get out this far. We got out here in five seconds." Pidge whispered in wonderment.

"This is unreal." Sakura breathed shakily. 

Then, something flashed in front of them - something large and blue, and probably the most spectacular thing Sakura had ever seen in her life (she was seeing a lot of those today, it seemed). It started out as a blue orb of light, bright against the backdrop of space, before suddenly fanning out in a glimmering explosion of light. The burst formed a large circle spitting light out into the cosmos, intricate markings ringing the entrance to what appeared to be a bright, intense tunnel of pure energy. Sakura felt her her heart drop down into her stomach.

"What is that?!" Hunk blurted, echoing her thoughts.

"Uh..." Lance swallowed. "This may seem crazy, but I think the Lion wants us to go through there."

"Where does it go?" Pidge asked apprehensively. Lance shook his head.

"I-I don't know." uncertainty shining in his eyes, he turned to Shiro with a pleading look on his face. There was suddenly solemn air about the cabin, the slight ringing in Sakura's ears only accentuating the grim silence. "Shiro, you're the senior officer here. What should we do?"

Shiro hesitated, his brows furrowing. He glanced over his shoulder, where the Galra warship was still rapidly gaining ground (space?) on them - then in front of them, where the portal-thing hovered, glowing, like an invitation. Sakura chewed her lip, waiting. Then, Shiro sighed.

"Whatever's happening, the Lion knows more than we do. I say we trust it, but we're a team now. We should decide together."

The inhabitants of the cabin looked at each other in silence, faces tense and worn and weary from all that had happened in the past couple of hours. And all that was sure to come, too, because if they had learned anything from today, it was that once shit started to happen, it was bound to keep happening for a good while, if not forever.

And as Sakura watched, she was suddenly acutely aware of being stuck on the outside of something that she would probably never understand. A vague sense of familiarity, and of loss, itched behind her eyeballs. 

The five nodded at each other in solemn, silent resolve. 

"...All right. Guess we're all ditching class tomorrow." Lance murmured. He turned back around in his seat, grabbed the controls, and pushed forward. The Lion soared forward, slowly at first but more steadily as they pressed on, until they passed through the ring of the tunnel and went sailing on through the whirling maelstrom of glimmering blue energy. The world went blue, and then white.

And if one of them had stayed behind to watch, they would have seen the portal blink out of sight before the alien ship could reach it, leaving the ravaged hunk of metal hanging silent and alone against the backdrop of empty space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i know i said things were going to start getting interesting this chapter but i didn't anticipate how long this chapter was gonna drag on for so uh,,,haha,,,,,
> 
> the Actual Canon-Divergent Shitfuck should start to happen next chapter. hopefully. maybe.
> 
> EDIT 7/12/19: Altered for Show Don't Tell, minor ooc stuff and to increase flow


	5. awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from bad to creepy. Sakura’s not sure if that’s an improvement.

The blue lion emerged from the portal in a brilliant flash of white-blue light, the burst of turbulence setting the cockpit vibrating around them. The whole team groaned loudly, Hunk and Nora the most dramatic of them all. Lance sat, breathing heavily, in the pilot’s chair, looking rather ill.

“Well, that was…” he began, but was interrupted by a loud heaving sound from just behind Sakura. Instincts kicked in just fast enough for her to dive out of the way, a half second before Hunk puked up his breakfast in the place she’d been standing moments before. A noise of disgust escaped her as he stopped retching for a couple of seconds to whimper “So sorry-” before continuing to vomit profusely.

“I’m just surprised it took this long.” Pidge deadpanned.

Stepping towards the front of the cabin, Shiro’s gaze swept over the sky outside, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

“I don’t recognize any of these constellations…” he muttered. “We must be a long, long way from Earth.” Towards the back of the cabin, Nora gulped audibly. Lance chimed in:

“The lion seems to want to go to this planet." he said. "I think… I think it’s going home.”

As he spoke, the Lion blasted its way through the atmosphere, making its way towards a noticeably Earth-like but very unfamiliar planet. As they descended, the cabin shook perilously; the team huddled together around the pilot's chair, carefully avoiding the puddle of puke on the floor, holding onto the walls and each other in order to remain grounded. Sakura hung back a little ways away, still holding herself in place using chakra; Sans, too, stood a few paces from the gropu his left eye glowing slightly - perhaps using his telekinesis to hold himself in place, she mused. 

The journey to the ground was rocky. Lance complained about Hunk's vomit-breath, asking for some personal space ("Space!" Nora and Sans chortled gleefully). That segwayed into a row over whether they should be trusting this robot Lion thing, a conversation which was far overdue, in Sakura's personal opinion. That particular argument was forgotten when Sakura threatened to launch the others bodily from the cockpit. The threat of a fistfight dissipated, however, when the silhouette of an enormous structure emerged from behind the clouds.

Beneath them was a long, metal bridge suspended over dark crags of rocky earth, many of its pillars cracked or broken to the point that Sakura wasn't entirely sure how it was still standing. The high peak of a mountain fell away underneath, leading down to a grassy shoreline, which tapered off and disappeared under a vast expanse of water that stretched as far as the eye could see. 

Through the glass, they observed with wide eyes the building at the other end of the bridge. Building seemed like an odd word, though, to describe something made almost entirely out of metal. To call it a castle also seemed a bit of a stretch, but that was really the only word Sakura could think of to describe it. The largest section of the structure, like a misshapen cone, was perched on the middle of a large hill; four pillars surrounded it, like the corners of a square, connected to the main structure by long strips of metal. The bridge led into what looked like a rectangular courtyard in front of the main entrance, and spilled off into other, smaller bridges, some of which broke off entirely after a few hundred meters while others traced a choppy outline of the climb down the rocky cliff face. 

At the Lion’s approach, the latent castle suddenly glimmered to life. Blue lights ignited all over the castle, a turquoise glow spilling out over the metal, the courtyard, and the terrain beyond. Everyone inside of the cockpit gasped, including Sakura.

It was breathtaking, that was for sure. But more importantly, it should have been impossible. She stared silently, with eyes wide with disbelief. 

_What the hell is this?_

* * *

They stared up at the castle from the courtyard, the wind whistling faintly in their ears.

“Hm.” Sans said. “So what now?”

Metal and stone scraped together as the Lion stood up. Hunk yelped, babbling something about being eaten, but was cut off by the loud roar that erupted from the Lion’s mouth. As the large teen cried out and cowered behind Shiro, the sound of creaking and scraping metal echoed across the hill. As they watched, the metal doors of the castle slid open for what sounded like the first time in many years. Nora’s jaw dropped.

“Oh.” said Hunk.

An eerie silence fell once again over the courtyard as they watched the castle for a moment longer, waiting to see if anything would emerge from the darkness behind the doors. Nothing did.

Unwilling to be intimidated, Nora puffed out her chest and strode forward, grenade launcher gripped tightly at her side as she stalked through the entrance. The rest of the team stumbled quickly after her, bemused expressions on their faces as they entered what appeared to be a large entrance hall.

It would have been quite stunning, had it not been for the fact that it was completely and eerily empty.

“Hellooooo?” Hunk’s voice boomed through the large, dark room. The rest of the team gave him startled looks, Nora looking as if she was about to have a fit. He shrugged.

Wandering through the entrance hall and poking around behind columns and pillars revealed nothing. There was no trace of life anywhere in the antechamber, not even so much as a mouse or a cockroach, and things had gone from eerie to downright creepy. Sans was the only one who seemed to be mildly enjoying himself, gazing around the room with a sort of detached fascination.

Their search yielded no results, and the eight found themselves at the back of the room, pausing at the base of a grand flight of stairs. Pidge gave a soft “huh”, echoing in the silence.

“Y’know, from the size of the Lion, I expected these stairs to be bigger.”

Then, just as suddenly as the rest of that day’s events, blue light erupted through the vestibule. Everyone’s gasps were drowned out by a tinny voice which resounded throughout the room.

“Hold for identity scan.”

Shiro half-snarled. “Why are we here? What do you want from us?” His voice was taut, and if Sakura had been a little less experienced she might have missed the barest hint of a tremor underneath the anger.

The metallic voice did not reply.

Then, light. Torches ignited, unnaturally turquoise orbs of neon light, sparking to life along the walls and tracing a path around the corner of a long, dark hallway. The lights trailed off into pinpricks in the darkness, as if beckoning them deeper into the castle. 

“...I guess we’re going that way.” Pidge muttered.

* * *

Nearly twenty minutes of walking finally led them to their apparent destination - a large, round room, a circle of pillars bisecting the room’s radius. Four circles on the floor ringed what appeared to be some sort of console in the center.

The team surveyed the room, mystified, and Pidge approached the console.

“Hello?” Hunk’s call echoed once again throughout the room, much less ominously this time. But like the last time, there was no reply.

“Where are we?” Lance asked.

Pidge frowned, his fingers flickering uncertainly above the console. His eyes traveled over the bluish buttons, tracing the letters of some unfamiliar language. “It’s some kind of control room.”

The console blinked to life. Pidge jumped backward, flinging his hands up in the air as if to say ‘I didn’t touch anything!’. A loud, hissing ‘whoosh!’ noise echoed from the ground as two of the circles suddenly extended; glass-faced cylinders emerged from the floor in clouds of steam. Everyone stood in shock, rooted in place, and watched, utterly still, as the fog cleared.

Behind the glass, two people looked back at them - eyes closed, expressions slack. Completely unmoving. A tense second passed. Two. Three. Four.

“Are these guys… dead?” Hunk whispered.

Then, the glass on one of the sleep pods opened - or rather, dissipated. The eyes of the figure behind it snapped open - a woman, with blue markings on her cheeks, white hair. Pointed ears. She fell forward with a cry.

“Father!”

Lance lunged, just in time, and the woman tumbled into his arms. Dead silence. Shimmery eyes gazed up at the boy in confusion; his face pinked slightly, but his expression quickly morphed into a smirk. His voice when he spoke was so over-the-top suave. Sakura couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Hello there.”

In the background, Sans snorted.

The dark-skinned woman paused, several emotions flickering across her face at once. When she next spoke, it was slow and uncertain, her voice touched with a lilting accent.

“Who… are you?”

Sakura wasn’t sure she could have given her an answer if she tried. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 7/12/19 - Edited for brevity and flow.


	6. distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura comes to a realization.

Two more hours of complete and utter madness found Sakura sitting quietly in the bridge of the enormous metal castle, accompanied by a teenage girl wielding a grenade launcher, a magic skeleton, and two aliens.

Not even a day ago, she had been sleeping in a cave in the middle of a desert with two strangers - the skeleton, and the girl with the grenade launcher. Still fairly unusual, yeah, but at least she had been on Earth. Or something vaguely resembling her version of it.

Two weeks before that, she had been on a mission with her teammates. A little lengthy, but routine, in land she knew fairly well from months and years of missions and patrols. No more high-stakes than any mission she had been on before, it had been something close to normalcy.

Now she was on an alien planet, in an alien spaceship-castle… thing, in the presence of two aliens, waiting for five humans to return with three additional alien robot lions, which would then be combined with the first to unlock a bigger, fifth one. Because one big ass mech just wasn’t _enough_ , apparently. Suddenly, everything was wrong, everything was confusing, and Sakura was _so damn tired_.

The pink-haired girl’s eyelids wrinkled as she screwed them tightly shut, bringing her fingers to her temples and rubbing slow, deliberate circles, as if she could somehow teleport herself back to Konoha by sheer force of will. After several seconds, she blinked her eyes open again, looking around to see if her surroundings had changed. Unsurprisingly, they hadn’t.

“So…” Nora spoke up quietly. The redhead stared at the ground, her feet dangling over a raised section of the bridge floor and swinging awkwardly. “...We’re on an alien spaceship, huh.”

“Yup.” Sans chimed from across the room, popping the ‘p’ (Sakura wasn’t sure how he could do that without lips, but apparently the normal rules for what was and wasn’t possible simply didn’t apply to him, so she had decided not to think about it too much). For the past sixty-or-so minutes since Shiro, Pidge, Keith, Lance, and Hunk - the Paladins, Sakura supposed she could call them now - had left, Sans had been hanging around the edges of the bridge, poking around at the strange Altean technology with uncharacteristic interest. Nobody really seemed to mind - it kept him too distracted to keep making puns, at least.

“And this…” Nora continued speaking, slowly. “This ship, it’s on an alien planet right now.”

“Yup.” Sans repeated.

“So…” Nora huffed, placing her chin in her hand glumly. “...I guess we’re not getting home any time soon, huh?”

“Unfortunately not.” came the reply, from one of the aliens this time. The woman - Allura, she remembered - stepped away from where she and the other one - what was his name... _Coran_ \- had been poking around on the ship’s computer. She really was rather pretty, Sakura thought distantly, with her dark skin and silvery hair, glimmery blue eyes, and high cheekbones. The distinctly inhuman shape of her ears and the markings under her eyes were a little off-putting, though. Sweeping briskly down the three steps leading up to the computer platform, the princess swept her gaze over the three of them, fingering the hem of one of her sleeves thoughtfully.

“Yes… it is unfortunate, but it can’t be done, at least not now.” Allura repeated. “With the Paladins currently preoccupied and all, it would be difficult and dangerous to fly you back to your planet right now. We’d be risking detection by any Galra who may still be skulking around, and right now we can’t afford to take that chance.”

Nora pouted and let out a displeased grumble, but she looked more dejected than irritated. Allura gave her a sympathetic look, which quickly faded into curiosity. She tipped her head, eyebrows pinching together slightly and her lips curving down at the edges. “It is strange, though…” she trailed off, gazing at Nora and Sakura in turn, then over at Sans, looking contemplative, but making no move to continue speaking.

Sakura twitched with annoyance. She was so tired of not knowing things. “What’s strange?” she asked testily.

Allura frowned, arching her eyebrows just a bit. “Well, it’s just…” she hesitated, tapping her bottom lip thoughtfully. “...You three have a… how do I say this… distinct Quintessence. It’s much different in nature than the Paladins, which is odd. Almost like you are different species, though supposedly you’re all humans...” she paused. “Actually, not only that, but your Quintessences are distinct from each others’ as well.”

“‘S that significant?” Sans piped up, idly examining a piece of tech, though Sakura could see him looking at Allura out of the corner of his eye.

Coran piped up. His hair was orange and bouncy, his voice squeaky and excitable, and Sakura found he reminded her quite a bit of Nora, actually. If Nora was a middle-aged elf-man-alien with a moustache. “I suppose it must be! Quintessence is, basically, the essence of life itself. It is the energy that fuels the universe, and everything in it. In a way, our Quintessence is a culmination of everything that we are, and everything that we could be.”

Sans gave up the pretense in favor of looking at the Alteans directly; Nora gazed at Coran like a wide-eyed child;

“...And that means?” Sakura pressed.

“Well, Quintessence is Quintessence, no matter who it comes from, but… the feeling of each person’s Quintessence, it’s… unique.” Allura continued. “It’s similar between family members, similar between species, things like that, but for each person there is something about it that makes it their own. You three and the Paladins, however…” she paused. Her forehead wrinkled delicately, as if she were concentrating very hard on something, before she gave a helpless shrug. “To be frank, you don’t even feel like you’re from the same planet.”

A dumbfounded silence followed. Nora stared at her hands intently, as if expecting to see a magical glow emanating from just beneath her skin. Sans suddenly seemed be very interested in the floor, and Sakura was sure if he had a brow to furrow, he would.

Sakura, with practiced indifference, only offered a raised eyebrow and a soft “Hmm”. Quintessence as explained by the Alteans sounded, quite frankly, like something out of a fairy tale, but she’d be lying if she said that Allura’s words hadn’t perplexed her, and even sent a chill up her spine.

It had not been lost on her that without all the spiritual what-not, this Quintessence stuff _also_ sounded a lot like chakra, at least conceptually. Sakura couldn’t see chakra - she had never been gifted with that sort of ability. But if she could, she wondered, would she have seen the same thing, the same discrepancy as Allura? 

...And if so, what did it mean?

* * *

The next couple of days proved to be just as hectic as the last. While the Paladins went robot hunting, Sakura, Nora, and Sans were given a brief, almost cautious tour of the castle-ship by Coran. The place was somehow even more spacious than it looked from the outside, equipped with a medical wing, kitchen, training deck, several sets of sleeping quarters, and even a ballroom - and those were just the amenities Allura had elected to show them thus far. Sakura surmised that she was probably still a tad suspicious of the three of them, and she couldn’t really say she blamed her; this was all probably just as weird on her end as it was on theirs. 

In addition to giving them the tour, Coran also assigned each of them a room in the barracks. The dorms were nothing particularly fancy, containing a bed, personal storage, some lamps and a desk each, though each of them was also equipped with a computer and holographic display which Sakura couldn’t even begin to figure out how to use.

Still, despite the militaristic minimalism, the beds were plenty soft, and it was certainly a step up from sleeping on a hard cave floor. So it came as something of a wonder when Sakura found herself lying awake in the dead of night, staring blankly at the sliding panel making up the room's doorway. 

She laid like that for a while, occasionally tossing and turning in her search for a suitable position to doze off in, but sleep wouldn’t come. By the time she had finished counting her 2,547th sheep, Sakura was long fed up with the soft, ambient whirring of the castle around her. Pulling on some downy pink sweatpants provided by Allura, she tapped the panel next to the door and slouched out into the darkened hallway.

It took her probably twenty minutes to navigate her way to the front door of the castle, but the journey was well worth the rewarding gust of air that buffeted her face as she stepped outside. Standing still in front of the entrance, she took a long, slow breath through her nostrils, closing her eyes as she let it out through her mouth with a loud, satisfying ‘woosh’. If she concentrated hard enough, she could almost imagine she was back in Konoha - perhaps on top of the Hokage Tower, sharing a quiet moment with Sasuke after a long, difficult mission. Her cheeks pinked at the thought.

When Sakura opened her eyes again, she was greeted by a distant flash of orange in the darkness. Blinking a couple of times in confusion, she realized the strange spectre was actually Nora’s fiery hair, the breeze carding it through it and making it look almost as if it were waving at her. Squinting into the night, Sakura saw the other girl was seated on the edge of the castle’s main bridge, head bowed towards the ground below. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should just leave the older teen to her own devices; but, she mused, if she felt as miserable as Nora looked, she would probably like someone to talk to.

Sakura made her footsteps deliberately loud as she approached, ensuring Nora knew she was there; the redhead’s grenade launcher wasn’t with her at the moment, but Sakura guessed she was probably no less fearsome without it. Nora’s head turned in response, blinking in acknowledgement when she saw Sakura, before turning back to look over the edge of the bridge again. The brief glimpse of her eyes revealed that they were shiny with tears, which gaved Sakura pause. Slowly, she settled herself down on the edge next to Nora, letting her legs dangle in midair as her gaze turned to rest on the cliffs below.

It was a few cautious minutes before she decided to speak.

“Nora…” she started quietly. “... um. Are you okay?”

Nora let out a noncommittal grunt. Sakura wanted to punch herself. _Of course she’s not okay, stupid! Cha!_ She shook her head slightly at her own idiocy, but tried again nevertheless.

“...Look, um, I’m not gonna pretend that I understand whatever you’re feeling.” she continued on slowly, searching carefully for the right words this time. “...I mean, I’m out of the village a lot, with ninja stuff and all, so I guess I’m more used to, um, being away from home and all. I mean yeah, I guess this is a lot different than that, but... “ she looked at Nora worriedly. The redhead still hadn’t spoken, hadn't even moved, just sat there looking off into the distance with glassy eyes.

“Look I just… I’m here to talk, I guess is what I’m trying to say. If, you, y’know… want to, is all.” she tried. “Tsunad- my master, she’s always impressed upon me how important it is to get stuff off your chest when you’re feeling bad, because if you keep letting it pile up, it’ll... well it won't really do you any good in the long run, y’know?” Which, yes, that was half-true - Tsunade had always emphasized to her the importance of the Psych department and the concept of emotional release- but homesickness was quite different from the lasting trauma of killing and almost dying on a regular basis.

And... she had run out of things to say. Something close to the sound of chirping cicadas chimed quietly in the background, and as the silence continued, she began to worry that she had only made things worse.

Then there was a whisper, muttered so quietly that it might as well have been a trick of the wind. Nevertheless, Sakura pricked her ears and turned towards Nora, and waited. For something; perhaps for her to continue. But several long moments passed, and she did not.

“Wha-”

“I’m not from Earth!”

The words exploded from her suddenly and without warning, like a bomb that had been waiting to go off. The way the sentence sprang out of her was jarring, and seemed to set the air ringing in the silence that followed - it was as if the words had been bursting to escape for hours, or days, but could not until now. 

For the first time, Sakura came to the abrupt realization that perhaps all this was even more wrong to Nora than it was to her.

“Where I’m from…” Nora sniffled and slurred through her words, now crying outright. “It’s not called Earth. It’s called Remnant, and we- we have kingdoms, Vale and Vacuo and… and Atlas and Mistral, and there’s Dust, and Grimm and shit. Not giant robot cats and- and-” she waved her arms wildly in the direction of the castle, “-this!” Her voice broke on the last word, and she let out a choked sob and buried her face in her hands, rubbing her eyes furiously.

And Sakura realized that she was at a complete loss.

Not once had she considered that Nora might come from anywhere but Earth.

Not once had she considered that Nora might be even more disturbed by this whole ordeal than she was.

The entirety of the past few weeks she had spent wallowing over the situation she was in - but now, looking back on everything that had happened, the only thing she felt was guilt. How could she have gone all this time without thinking about how this might be affecting the others? Without trying to _help_ , as any good medi-nin should? After all this time, hadn’t she learned?

Feeling as if she, too, might burst into tears purely out of shame, Sakura reached up and placed a hand on Nora’s shoulder. She had no idea what she could say that would make the redhead feel better, but dammit, she couldn’t just sit there and do _nothing_.

But before she could figure out what to say, Nora sucked in a long gulp of air and exhaled shakily, composing herself in a way that seemed much too practiced, much too familiar. As her shallow breathing evened out, the redhead turned to fix Sakura with a watery stare. Her eyes were lost, helpless and confused, and Sakura was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that Nora was only a few years older than her, and perhaps even a bit younger in terms of maturity. The thought shook her to the bone, and Sakura found that she was suddenly very, very sorry.

“Sakura…” Nora sniffled. “We’re… we’re really far away from home right now, aren’t we?”

And Sakura knew exactly what she meant.

“...Yeah.” she said slowly. She turned her head up, up towards a sky full of unrecognizable constellations.

“We definitely are.”

The wind rustled between the supports of the bridge, around the crags of the mountain and through the castle towers and the leaves of the forests in the distance. And but for the world around them, moving and writhing in quiet and incomprehensible ways, all was still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOW we’re GETTING somewhere


	7. diverge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone...?

The Void was cold, and very dark. The ground was dark, too, hard and unforgiving, stretching on for miles and miles ahead, disappearing into shadows cast from nothing. There was no light here, the “sky” an empty black void around him, and yet he could see his hands, his feet, and the glossy black floor beneath him. For all of these reasons, it was a miserable place. But the worst part about the Void was just how empty it was. A cavernous abyss, where nothing and no one lived. 

Except him.

Except Gaara. 

He could not, for the life of him, figure out how he’d wound up here. The past yielded no clues, no traces of an explanation. He remembered it was bright, there was hot breakfast on the table and his siblings’ laughter in the air. It was light, and warm. And then…

...And then...? 

And then it was very dark, and it had been ever since.

He wasn’t sure how long he had wandered, but judging by the aching of his feet, it had been quite a while. His mouth was dry, and his stomach growled, and he reflected that he hadn’t gotten the chance to finish his breakfast before getting stuck here. Which was a shame, because it had been Kankuro’s turn to cook, and Kankuro always made the best breakfasts. 

His limbs felt leaden at the thought, and for the first time since he had arrived, Gaara stopped to rest, flopping down right where he stood and tucking his feet underneath him. He swept his eyes one last time over his surroundings, searching… for what, he didn’t know. The darkness was a spiteful thing, though, and revealed nothing to him.

He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap, and allowed his eyes to slip closed. A few moments’ rest, he thought. Then he would be on his way. 

The Void was dark, and Gaara was very, very alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (but not for long)


End file.
